Greenwich Blade
Hitch-Hike General
It’s been a vintage season. No, really, it has. Unfortunately for fellow-sufferers down at Bramall Lane I don’t mean the fare on offer atop the hallowed Desso turf, but rather for the sheer volume of late arrivals by Yours Truly.
In bygone seasons I’ve always managed to slip one, maybe two, missed kick-offs into the humdrum of following United, whilst every other season I’ve chucked in a match missed in its entirety. The most infamous of these was Norwich away in 2000 as recorded in Fever Hitch when I took poor old Katrina on her first and last ever hitching adventure. However, my personal favourite was probably Chelsea at home in the old Division One in the ancient days of Dave Bassett when I set out from Brackley full of hope and optimism. My first lift took me along the A43 with an American from the local air force base who was off into the wilds of Northamptonshire for a spot of bird-watching.
He dropped me at Junction 15a, then known as Rothersthorpe Services, now better recognised as Northampton Services. It was a slow start on the M1 but eventually I got a lift to Watford Gap; however there my luck ran out and eventually when I realised I wasn’t even going to make it for second-half-injury-time I crossed the bridge and hitched back south, arriving at 15a just in time for my ornithological USAF chum to pick me up as he returned from a successful day of binocular-twitching. “What happened?” he asked, full of surprise.
“Bad day,” I replied grumpily. At least United won.
This season of 2015/2016 I have suffered just one total blank in the form of Oldham away when for the first time ever Toddington Services delivered a fatal blow to my aspirations, meaning I headed back towards home on the opposite side, picking up a lift just as Matty Done was equalising. For this piece though I will be concentrating on Late Arrivals Only as there really has been a mind-bogglingly large number of them. In fact - *goes off to tot up* - there have been six, yes SIX, this season including two Holy Grails of Late Arrivals, the magnificent Second-Half Entrance, one of which surpassed my previous best of ten-minutes into the second period away at Stockport.
Up until the Shrewsbury home game I’d had a pretty good run this campaign if you ignore the Oldham disaster, but this particular evening kick-off was always going to be a tough one owing to an appointment that ended at 3.30 in the afternoon, meaning that it was getting dark by the time I set off and was dark by the time I hit the M1.
Here I thought I’d struck gold when a car-load of Trade Platers – those mythical beasts who deliver vehicles and then hitch back, always getting a lift before your standard hitchhiker – whose employer had loaned them a hire car for their journey back to base in Manchester. What really raised my hopes was when they told me that their route to Manchester took them to Junction 35a of the M1 rather than the M6; “No-one knows the roads better than us,” stated the driver firmly.
They’d spotted my bright-yellow goalie-shirt and had decided to take a diversion to pick me up because it just so happened that one of their number had a truck to pick up in Enfield so our flirtation with the M1 was brief, switching carriageways at the next junction and heading back to the M25. After ditching their colleague, the driver picked up that the traffic was terrible on the M1 so he made the decision to head north up the A1 instead, joining the M1 at Worksop. Unfortunately, a crash at Stevenage meant that the traffic on the Great North Road was terrible also and my hopes of making kick-off were diminishing rapidly, although they were briefly raised again when we hit the A57 at Worksop at speed, 95mph to be precise. “That’s slow for him,” said one of them in the back, “with a better car he’d have cleared a ton.” Flip.
As it was we arrived at Meadowhall just before 8pm with a train as if almost on Greenwich Standby waiting to be jumped on. My phone was running on vapour by now but as the train lurched into action and I hid in the toilet, I risked a glance at the latest score; remarkably we were 1-0 up and even more remarkably Connor Sammon had banged it in. Once at Sheffield Midland Station as I raced down the stairs and out of the station I had one last check of the score; still 1-0 – good stuff, but better switch the phone off now.
If run-one-lamppost-walk-one-lamppost was an Olympic sport, I’d at least have a bronze medal in my clutches but on this occasion I wasn’t about to break any records. Even so, I dragged my sorry carcass up Shoreham Street as fast as I could, determined to see as much of United building on that lead and going from strength to strength as possible. As I approached John Street I heard a cheer from within and surmised that it wasn’t loud enough to be United, thus a gloomy feeling settled uncomfortably on my stomach. Once I was through the turnstile I saw a fellow-Blade coming down the steps who greeted me with, “I wouldn’t f*****g bother going in if I was you.”
“Why, are we losing?” I asked in all innocence.
“Three-f*****g-one!” he exclaimed, sounding a bit like Golden Gordon.
As I marched resolutely up the steps towards the Kop I was met by many a Blade heading the opposite way advising me in varying degrees of politeness to turn round and head for home. My entrance was in the 37th minute and Shrewsbury, having just gone 3-1 up, were now lining up a free-kick on the edge of the box whilst the Kop booed heartily, something they did again at half-time, and again at full-time with much more in-between. With a final score of 4-2 I didn’t see what they were all so wound up about – I’d seen us draw 1-1.
For Coventry City at home, a ridiculous Sunday lunchtime kick-off because Sky deemed it worthy of TV coverage, I played it safe on the Megabus with a scheduled arrival half-an-hour before kick-off. Lousy traffic on the M1 put paid to that leading to an arrival on the Kop timed at half-an-hour late, just in time to see Jay McEveley perform the crudest tackle in the history of the game not to be rewarded with a red card. At that point it was still 0-0, and even better, we somehow won the game 1-0.
Colchester United away was a late arrival brought about by my own stupidity married to my ridiculous lack of a sense of direction. Once again I played it safe this time with National Express, arriving in plenty of time for kick-off. The plan was to meet other London Blades in The Bricklayers, their messages insisting that it was right by the train station. Well I was right by the train station and I couldn’t find it, although I had an uneasy feeling that the station didn’t look anything like it had done on my last visit. Google Maps was no help either as it kept sending me miles off in the opposite direction to which I thought I should be going.
As a result, I wandered aimlessly in circles and back and forth for the best part of an hour before there was a great dawning realisation; there were two train stations in Colchester and undoubtedly I was at the wrong one. The London Blades had long since given up on me and gone to the ground so all I was left with was the vain hope that I could get to the Football Special Buses in time to catch the last one.
I didn’t.
By the time I’d walked all the way to the ground, a right old trek, I can tell you, we were over 30 minutes in and Billy Sharp had us a goal up. Yet again in effect I saw us draw 1-1 as we ran out actual 2-1 winners, thanks to an injury-time goal that nobody has yet worked out the scorer of (Edgar claimed it, but no way, sorry David).
Swindon Town at home brought about an experimental drop-off at Junction 19 of the M25; in the end I had to walk all the way to Junction 21a so that tells you all you need to know about whether it was a success or not. It was actually a miracle that I only arrived ten-minutes late, this time hearing the cheer accompanying Billy Sharp slotting home a penalty at almost the same spot on Shoreham Street as I had for the Shrewsbury game.
United a goal to the good I felt relaxed enough to quip to my friends, “Do you remember when I used to turn up to matches on time?” before settling down to watch a rather dreary performance petering out to a 1-1 draw.
I am aware that I have already written, albeit it in short(ish)-hand, about the Good Friday disaster of Crewe at home but it is worth mentioning again that when I arrived with 23-minutes left on the clock this was a new record late-arrival, made even worse by United being 2-0 up as I took my seat, and then finding ourselves pegged back to 2-2 fifteen minutes later with the finger of blame being pointed firmly in my direction. Luckily for me that bloke Billy Sharp came to the rescue again with a late winner meaning I’d actually seen a rather exciting 23-minutes (plus injury time) of football.
And so we come to my latest nightmare: Chesterfield away.
The dreaded Shingles were still not entirely out of my system so I was advised by the ever-concerned Helen to take it easy and book the Megabus. As I moped around in the week leading up to the game, if I thought once that it was a strange decision not to kick off early like they usually do for United away at Chesterfield, I thought it one-thousand times. If only Jelly Head would check his ticket…
Things got off to a very bad start in the morning when I looked in my wallet at the checkout in Sainsbury’s only to realise my brand-new-that-week debit card was missing presumed lost. If only Jelly Head had checked his bedroom floor before leaving…
I spent much of the journey up cancelling my card over the phone and seeking reassurance from Northern Rail that I would still be able to collect my pre-booked ticket for Meadowhall to Chesterfield despite not having the card I’d actually used to pay with.
For once the Megabus was actually early, pulling into Meadowhall Interchange just before one-o’clock meaning I could have a very relaxed two hours leisurely making my way to Chesterfield. With no debit card and only loose change in my wallet I would have to be careful with my spending but figured a £1 Cornish pasty from the Sainsbury’s petrol station would be a handy investment. However, as I strolled across the forecourt my phone buzzed; I glanced down to check it and a very strange and somewhat nasty twisting, sinking, lurching feeling overcame my stomach as I read, “Game in progress: Chesterfield 0-0 Sheffield United – 1min”.
As I dashed over to the ticket office I checked again to see if I’d imagined the whole thing; “Game in progress: Chesterfield 0-1 Sheffield United – 4min: Baptiste (4)”. Oh dear. And brilliant at the same time. It really is hard to describe the feelings and thoughts swimming around my head and body at that particular moment but I managed to hold things together enough to sort out the complications of my train ticket. If only Jelly Head could get to Chesterfield…
The next train to Sheffield was due at 13:15 but decided to be delayed by more than 15-minutes, something that did little to sweeten my mood. Luckily the train from Sheffield to Chesterfield that I would have otherwise now missed was delayed too so a frantic dash across the bridge saw me leaping aboard just in time, only for said train to pull up again for what seemed an eternity, affording me an excellent view of Co-operative Funerals. And heck, did that train seem to take a long time getting to Chesterfield; at least I spent this time wisely counting up the contents of my wallet, £3.27 and a McDonald’s Monopoly voucher for a free McFlurry, as well as planning my route via Google Maps. Che Adams somewhere along the line had stuck in a second for United.
As we pulled into Chesterfield Station it was now 14:55 so the supposed 27-minutes that Google Maps told me it would take to walk to the ground was not an option that sat happily with me so I devised a plan; I just hoped the taxi-driver had a thing for McFlurries.
The poor cab-driver looked a bit confused as I bundled into his vehicle and said, “I don’t know how much it costs to get to the ground but I need to get to the match and all I have is £3.27 and a coupon for a free McFlurry, so how close will that get me?”
To be fair to the chap he went along with it even if he didn’t take me all the way and also kept asking me if I was sure the McFlurry would be free. In the end he announced that we were “£3.80 into the journey so I’ll have turn back here,” leaving me with a ten-minute hike to the ground, whereby I figured that he placed a value of 53p on a McFlurry – stingy get.
As I approached the ground I saw a lot of coppers engaged in conversation with a group of young hoodlums; the fact that they were outside meant they weren’t chucking ketchup and mustard around on the away end’s concourse. Passing other police personnel and stewards I saved them the bother of asking where on earth I’d been by saying, “Guess who didn’t realise it was a one-o’clock kick-off then?”
“If it’s any consolation,” said one officer of the law, “you’re winning 2-0.”
“Aye,” I replied, “but that should come to an end once I get in.”
The stewards I shouted to through the locked gate seemed unsure as what to do but eventually a friendly fire steward came to the rescue by unlocking a door and ushering me in, an act of kindness that led to me feeling sorry for him when the United fans chanted, “You fat bastard!” in his direction.
Just like my pre-Crewe best of ten-minutes into the second-half of that Stockport game of yesteryear, my arrival at Chesterfield’s ground was approximately around the 55th minute, and yet again it was Billy Sharp who made the whole ridiculous escapade worthwhile by netting United’s third goal four minutes later, right in front of me to boot.
Chesterfield away may not have been my latest-ever arrival, but for sheer stupidity it really will take some beating; still, I’m up for a challenge.
In bygone seasons I’ve always managed to slip one, maybe two, missed kick-offs into the humdrum of following United, whilst every other season I’ve chucked in a match missed in its entirety. The most infamous of these was Norwich away in 2000 as recorded in Fever Hitch when I took poor old Katrina on her first and last ever hitching adventure. However, my personal favourite was probably Chelsea at home in the old Division One in the ancient days of Dave Bassett when I set out from Brackley full of hope and optimism. My first lift took me along the A43 with an American from the local air force base who was off into the wilds of Northamptonshire for a spot of bird-watching.
He dropped me at Junction 15a, then known as Rothersthorpe Services, now better recognised as Northampton Services. It was a slow start on the M1 but eventually I got a lift to Watford Gap; however there my luck ran out and eventually when I realised I wasn’t even going to make it for second-half-injury-time I crossed the bridge and hitched back south, arriving at 15a just in time for my ornithological USAF chum to pick me up as he returned from a successful day of binocular-twitching. “What happened?” he asked, full of surprise.
“Bad day,” I replied grumpily. At least United won.
This season of 2015/2016 I have suffered just one total blank in the form of Oldham away when for the first time ever Toddington Services delivered a fatal blow to my aspirations, meaning I headed back towards home on the opposite side, picking up a lift just as Matty Done was equalising. For this piece though I will be concentrating on Late Arrivals Only as there really has been a mind-bogglingly large number of them. In fact - *goes off to tot up* - there have been six, yes SIX, this season including two Holy Grails of Late Arrivals, the magnificent Second-Half Entrance, one of which surpassed my previous best of ten-minutes into the second period away at Stockport.
Up until the Shrewsbury home game I’d had a pretty good run this campaign if you ignore the Oldham disaster, but this particular evening kick-off was always going to be a tough one owing to an appointment that ended at 3.30 in the afternoon, meaning that it was getting dark by the time I set off and was dark by the time I hit the M1.
Here I thought I’d struck gold when a car-load of Trade Platers – those mythical beasts who deliver vehicles and then hitch back, always getting a lift before your standard hitchhiker – whose employer had loaned them a hire car for their journey back to base in Manchester. What really raised my hopes was when they told me that their route to Manchester took them to Junction 35a of the M1 rather than the M6; “No-one knows the roads better than us,” stated the driver firmly.
They’d spotted my bright-yellow goalie-shirt and had decided to take a diversion to pick me up because it just so happened that one of their number had a truck to pick up in Enfield so our flirtation with the M1 was brief, switching carriageways at the next junction and heading back to the M25. After ditching their colleague, the driver picked up that the traffic was terrible on the M1 so he made the decision to head north up the A1 instead, joining the M1 at Worksop. Unfortunately, a crash at Stevenage meant that the traffic on the Great North Road was terrible also and my hopes of making kick-off were diminishing rapidly, although they were briefly raised again when we hit the A57 at Worksop at speed, 95mph to be precise. “That’s slow for him,” said one of them in the back, “with a better car he’d have cleared a ton.” Flip.
As it was we arrived at Meadowhall just before 8pm with a train as if almost on Greenwich Standby waiting to be jumped on. My phone was running on vapour by now but as the train lurched into action and I hid in the toilet, I risked a glance at the latest score; remarkably we were 1-0 up and even more remarkably Connor Sammon had banged it in. Once at Sheffield Midland Station as I raced down the stairs and out of the station I had one last check of the score; still 1-0 – good stuff, but better switch the phone off now.
If run-one-lamppost-walk-one-lamppost was an Olympic sport, I’d at least have a bronze medal in my clutches but on this occasion I wasn’t about to break any records. Even so, I dragged my sorry carcass up Shoreham Street as fast as I could, determined to see as much of United building on that lead and going from strength to strength as possible. As I approached John Street I heard a cheer from within and surmised that it wasn’t loud enough to be United, thus a gloomy feeling settled uncomfortably on my stomach. Once I was through the turnstile I saw a fellow-Blade coming down the steps who greeted me with, “I wouldn’t f*****g bother going in if I was you.”
“Why, are we losing?” I asked in all innocence.
“Three-f*****g-one!” he exclaimed, sounding a bit like Golden Gordon.
As I marched resolutely up the steps towards the Kop I was met by many a Blade heading the opposite way advising me in varying degrees of politeness to turn round and head for home. My entrance was in the 37th minute and Shrewsbury, having just gone 3-1 up, were now lining up a free-kick on the edge of the box whilst the Kop booed heartily, something they did again at half-time, and again at full-time with much more in-between. With a final score of 4-2 I didn’t see what they were all so wound up about – I’d seen us draw 1-1.
For Coventry City at home, a ridiculous Sunday lunchtime kick-off because Sky deemed it worthy of TV coverage, I played it safe on the Megabus with a scheduled arrival half-an-hour before kick-off. Lousy traffic on the M1 put paid to that leading to an arrival on the Kop timed at half-an-hour late, just in time to see Jay McEveley perform the crudest tackle in the history of the game not to be rewarded with a red card. At that point it was still 0-0, and even better, we somehow won the game 1-0.
Colchester United away was a late arrival brought about by my own stupidity married to my ridiculous lack of a sense of direction. Once again I played it safe this time with National Express, arriving in plenty of time for kick-off. The plan was to meet other London Blades in The Bricklayers, their messages insisting that it was right by the train station. Well I was right by the train station and I couldn’t find it, although I had an uneasy feeling that the station didn’t look anything like it had done on my last visit. Google Maps was no help either as it kept sending me miles off in the opposite direction to which I thought I should be going.
As a result, I wandered aimlessly in circles and back and forth for the best part of an hour before there was a great dawning realisation; there were two train stations in Colchester and undoubtedly I was at the wrong one. The London Blades had long since given up on me and gone to the ground so all I was left with was the vain hope that I could get to the Football Special Buses in time to catch the last one.
I didn’t.
By the time I’d walked all the way to the ground, a right old trek, I can tell you, we were over 30 minutes in and Billy Sharp had us a goal up. Yet again in effect I saw us draw 1-1 as we ran out actual 2-1 winners, thanks to an injury-time goal that nobody has yet worked out the scorer of (Edgar claimed it, but no way, sorry David).
Swindon Town at home brought about an experimental drop-off at Junction 19 of the M25; in the end I had to walk all the way to Junction 21a so that tells you all you need to know about whether it was a success or not. It was actually a miracle that I only arrived ten-minutes late, this time hearing the cheer accompanying Billy Sharp slotting home a penalty at almost the same spot on Shoreham Street as I had for the Shrewsbury game.
United a goal to the good I felt relaxed enough to quip to my friends, “Do you remember when I used to turn up to matches on time?” before settling down to watch a rather dreary performance petering out to a 1-1 draw.
I am aware that I have already written, albeit it in short(ish)-hand, about the Good Friday disaster of Crewe at home but it is worth mentioning again that when I arrived with 23-minutes left on the clock this was a new record late-arrival, made even worse by United being 2-0 up as I took my seat, and then finding ourselves pegged back to 2-2 fifteen minutes later with the finger of blame being pointed firmly in my direction. Luckily for me that bloke Billy Sharp came to the rescue again with a late winner meaning I’d actually seen a rather exciting 23-minutes (plus injury time) of football.
And so we come to my latest nightmare: Chesterfield away.
The dreaded Shingles were still not entirely out of my system so I was advised by the ever-concerned Helen to take it easy and book the Megabus. As I moped around in the week leading up to the game, if I thought once that it was a strange decision not to kick off early like they usually do for United away at Chesterfield, I thought it one-thousand times. If only Jelly Head would check his ticket…
Things got off to a very bad start in the morning when I looked in my wallet at the checkout in Sainsbury’s only to realise my brand-new-that-week debit card was missing presumed lost. If only Jelly Head had checked his bedroom floor before leaving…
I spent much of the journey up cancelling my card over the phone and seeking reassurance from Northern Rail that I would still be able to collect my pre-booked ticket for Meadowhall to Chesterfield despite not having the card I’d actually used to pay with.
For once the Megabus was actually early, pulling into Meadowhall Interchange just before one-o’clock meaning I could have a very relaxed two hours leisurely making my way to Chesterfield. With no debit card and only loose change in my wallet I would have to be careful with my spending but figured a £1 Cornish pasty from the Sainsbury’s petrol station would be a handy investment. However, as I strolled across the forecourt my phone buzzed; I glanced down to check it and a very strange and somewhat nasty twisting, sinking, lurching feeling overcame my stomach as I read, “Game in progress: Chesterfield 0-0 Sheffield United – 1min”.
As I dashed over to the ticket office I checked again to see if I’d imagined the whole thing; “Game in progress: Chesterfield 0-1 Sheffield United – 4min: Baptiste (4)”. Oh dear. And brilliant at the same time. It really is hard to describe the feelings and thoughts swimming around my head and body at that particular moment but I managed to hold things together enough to sort out the complications of my train ticket. If only Jelly Head could get to Chesterfield…
The next train to Sheffield was due at 13:15 but decided to be delayed by more than 15-minutes, something that did little to sweeten my mood. Luckily the train from Sheffield to Chesterfield that I would have otherwise now missed was delayed too so a frantic dash across the bridge saw me leaping aboard just in time, only for said train to pull up again for what seemed an eternity, affording me an excellent view of Co-operative Funerals. And heck, did that train seem to take a long time getting to Chesterfield; at least I spent this time wisely counting up the contents of my wallet, £3.27 and a McDonald’s Monopoly voucher for a free McFlurry, as well as planning my route via Google Maps. Che Adams somewhere along the line had stuck in a second for United.
As we pulled into Chesterfield Station it was now 14:55 so the supposed 27-minutes that Google Maps told me it would take to walk to the ground was not an option that sat happily with me so I devised a plan; I just hoped the taxi-driver had a thing for McFlurries.
The poor cab-driver looked a bit confused as I bundled into his vehicle and said, “I don’t know how much it costs to get to the ground but I need to get to the match and all I have is £3.27 and a coupon for a free McFlurry, so how close will that get me?”
To be fair to the chap he went along with it even if he didn’t take me all the way and also kept asking me if I was sure the McFlurry would be free. In the end he announced that we were “£3.80 into the journey so I’ll have turn back here,” leaving me with a ten-minute hike to the ground, whereby I figured that he placed a value of 53p on a McFlurry – stingy get.
As I approached the ground I saw a lot of coppers engaged in conversation with a group of young hoodlums; the fact that they were outside meant they weren’t chucking ketchup and mustard around on the away end’s concourse. Passing other police personnel and stewards I saved them the bother of asking where on earth I’d been by saying, “Guess who didn’t realise it was a one-o’clock kick-off then?”
“If it’s any consolation,” said one officer of the law, “you’re winning 2-0.”
“Aye,” I replied, “but that should come to an end once I get in.”
The stewards I shouted to through the locked gate seemed unsure as what to do but eventually a friendly fire steward came to the rescue by unlocking a door and ushering me in, an act of kindness that led to me feeling sorry for him when the United fans chanted, “You fat bastard!” in his direction.
Just like my pre-Crewe best of ten-minutes into the second-half of that Stockport game of yesteryear, my arrival at Chesterfield’s ground was approximately around the 55th minute, and yet again it was Billy Sharp who made the whole ridiculous escapade worthwhile by netting United’s third goal four minutes later, right in front of me to boot.
Chesterfield away may not have been my latest-ever arrival, but for sheer stupidity it really will take some beating; still, I’m up for a challenge.
..... although our unforgiving started with an F !!!
